Minutes of
the February 15, 2012, meeting were approved with no changes.

III.Officer Reports

Secretary: Nina McPherson – no report

Communications:Ken Swayne –
no report

TBR Representative:Dave
Vinson –

Vinson said that the sub-council
will meet in April.Vinson did refer to
the email he sent earlier concerning information in TBR’s Task Force on Adjunct
Faculty (TFAF). The committee is divided into four action teams:

1.“DEFINITION ACTION TEAM: that the definition of
“adjunct faculty” in TBR Policy be clarified, revised as needed, and used
consistently throughout all relevant TBR policies and guidelines.

3.QUALITY
TEACHING ACTION TEAM: that best practices in training adjunct faculty including
orientation, technology in teaching, and pedagogy be systemically identified
and shared

4.COMMUNICATION
ACTION TEAM: that best practices in Communication, Working environment, and
Inclusion and recognition practices be identified and shared

Vinson is on the Compensation
Action Team and Mark Fuentes is on the Definition Action Team.Vinson emailed this section from the task
force:

“(Tutors)
(whose qualifications are not defined clearly and definitely based on
my research so far) are now getting paid $15.5 per hour at Nashville State
Community College. As we have all done the math, a
$480-per-hour compensation rate for an adjunct with an advanced
degree equals $1440 per semester for one course. If a semester lasts
about 15 weeks (including the final exam week), the adjunct makes $96 per
week. Moreover, if the adjunct works 10 hours per week (i.e.,
answering students' emails, training, teaching, grading, and preparing for
lecture), s/he makes $9.6 per hour, which is less than $15.50 per hour paid to
tutors in spring 2012.”

President: Ron Bridges

Announced that on April 10th,
Pat Myers and the Foundation will sponsor a presentation of regalia ceremony
for President Wise.

The selection committee has
narrowed down the list of candidates for Vice President of Academic Affairs to
four.On campus interviews will be
conducted during March 26 thru March 29.The process will be much the same as the one used for the presidential
search.The candidates will tour every
campus.All employees will have the
opportunity to ask each candidate questions during an open forum.

Academic departments should select
their Faculty Senate representatives before the next Faculty Senate meeting in
April.All out-going and new senators
should attend the April Faculty Senate meeting.

Bridges discussed an unintended
consequence that arose from the Faculty Hiring Adhoc
committee work.One of the concerns was
the length of time required for Human Resources to schedule candidate
interviews.For this semester’s round of
interviews, several departments have given the scheduling responsibilities to their
secretaries. This decision was made between the deans and Lois Reynolds and was
supposed to be voluntary by the departments.This change is not a final decision and is still being considered by
Lois Reynolds.

Cohort and Accelerated Programs.The Complete College Tennessee Act includes a
requirement to “incorporate the use of block scheduling and cohort
programming as a means of delivering educational programs within the Tennessee
community college system.”For the
complete document, see the following website:

The
importance of this for faculty members is that TBR, based on this legislation,
will be asking more of us to teach in cohort, block scheduling and other
accelerated formats.

Dr. Wise has formed a committee to
explore the overall process of the student perception of faculty and recommend
changes.The committee will investigate
the purpose of the for the process, the use of data, types of questions used,
and the process of conducting the survey.The committee has only met by email.A chair has not been designated.The Student Perception is tied to promotion/tenure.The promotion/tenure policy is scheduled to
be reviewed this year.Faculty Senate
will form a committee to review the current policy and make a recommendation
about the policy.

Bridges reported that Rebecca
Ashford, Vice President of Student Success and Enrollment Management, is
forming several subcommittees to periodically feedback on services provided by
units in her department.

IV.Committee Reports

Adjunct Faculty:William Gwin/Leigh Moore

Although not concerning only
adjunct faculty, there was discussion about the problem of Pellissippi
and local school systems not having spring breaks at the same time.Faculty teaching dual enrollment classes
might not be able to take advantage of having spring break.Although there was considerable discussion
there was no resolution to the problem.

Student Scholarships:Michael
Lusk – no report

Rules:Trent Eades, Reporting for Donn King

Eades reported that the committee
is continuing to work on wording for a constitution change providing for more
time between the dates nominees for president-elect are announced and the dates
for voting.

Nominating Committee:Nina McPherson – no report

Promotion/Tenure:Mark Fuentes

Departments conducted their peer review
meetings last week, March 12-16.Department deans will make recommendations to the Vice President of
Academic Affairs by March 26.The Vice President
of Academic Affairs will make recommendations to the President by April
20.The President will notify candidates
of his decision by April 27.The
President will make recommendation to TBR on April 30.

.

Faculty Development: Ron Bridges and
Nancy Pevey

Pevey reported that programs for inservice are still being developed.Some programs will be conducted over a period
of time and not just one day.

Faculty Lecture Series: Trent Eades and
Keith Norris

Katie
Lovett’s “Women in Film” was presented today.The rest of the schedule for spring semester is:

April 19, 12:30“Sexy Shakespeare II: The Further
Adventures of the Amorous Bard of Avon:--Ed Francisco (co-sponsored
with Gnosis)

Norris said that many faculty have volunteered to do lectures.Faculty have not been recruited for this,
they have volunteered.

Advising Issues Ad Hoc Committee: Ron Bridges

Tankersley was not able to attend
the Faculty Senate meeting.Bridges said
that Tankserley will provide a committee report at
the April meeting. Committee members met with their academic departments last
week.Using feedback from those
meetings, the committee will finalize its recommendations. There was discussion
that it is unrealistic to expect faculty to be able to advise any and all
majors.No final decisions have been
made.FERPA requirements make advising
difficult.And advising high school
students is very problematic because of FERPA.

Student Behavior Ad hoc – Michael Lusk - no report

Faculty Hiring Adhoc Committee – Charles
Cardwell

Cardwell reported that he is
scheduled to meet with Kae Carpenter when she is on
campus.There is continuing discussion
with Human Resources about the form used to evaluate employee applicants.

Post-retirement Adhoc Committee – Tyra
Barrett

Barrett reported that an information
request was sent to other TBR colleges about their use of post-retirement
employment.Information received showed
that some do offer it.

There is not one guideline that is
used by the colleges who do offer post-retirement to faculty.A retiring faculty member who met with the
Vice President of Business/Finance in the fall of 2011 was told that the
decision not to offer post-retirement employment to Pellissippi
faculty was not a financial decision.The
original Faculty Senate proposal to the college from several years ago was to
offer post-retirement employment to faculty for fifteen hours, at half of the
faculty salary, for up to four years.The committee is not ready to make a final proposal to Faculty Senate
yet.

V.Unfinished Business - None

VI,Discussion

Student Perception of Faculty –
Ron Bridges

Majority of discussion is included in
the President’s report section of the minutes.There was some discussion about the process currently used.Forms are distributed to students in the
classroom and then faculty leave the room unattended.Students can abuse this unattended time by
discussing the rating (s) of the faculty.Although it is not required, faculty can request other faculty to
distribute the forms and stay in the classroom to ensure that appropriate
behavior is followed.

CDC Process – Bob Stern

Stern discussed an issue concerning
proposed mathematics course catalog changes presented to the Curriculum
Development Committee. The math department spent considerable time
reviewing the math course prerequisites. The department submitted its
proposed changes, which involved increasing the ACT prerequisite scores for
several courses, to the CDC during fall semester. CDC approved the
proposal and sent it on to the Interim Academic VP. The department did
not hear anything further about this proposal until February 29. The
Interim Academic VP then turned down the proposal. Math faculty are
concerned that they were not notified of this action until it was too late to
revise their proposal or work on a compromise of some type. Among the
Interim Academic VP justifications was that the Math 1130 course is one of the
targeted courses in the QEP plan and thus should not have any changes made to
it at this time that would confound conclusions about the effectiveness of the
QEP.

Textbooks – Charles Cardwell

Cardwell discussed the issue of the
bookstore setting an earlier deadline for textbook orders.This was precipitated by changes in the
federal law requiring that students have textbook information, specifically
costs, at the time of their registration.This requires that that information be available when early registration
begins.Although this creates problems for
some academic programs, there seems to be no solution.

Student Government Association –
Trent Eades

Some students are interested in
establishing a student government association.Jake Hamric will facilitate a discussion about
this on April 5th, 3:30pm, in the Goins Auditorium.Eades asked that Senators encourage
interested students to attend.

VII.New Business:

None

VII.Announcements-

Ken Swayne reported that the
robotics team from Pellissippi State competed in the IEEE SoutheastCon
2012 Hardware Competition.Contenders
included two other community colleges and 51 four year institutions.The team placed 13th out of 54,
one position behind the UTK team and ahead of such top-ranked institutions as
Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, and the University of Florida.